


Amanatsu

by Petronia



Series: Hesperides (Citrus-verse) [3]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: M/M, Not so performative submission, Perfume, Post-Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-14
Updated: 2016-03-14
Packaged: 2018-05-26 15:19:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6244891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petronia/pseuds/Petronia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Wear it to bed,” Hannibal said. “Don’t wear anything else.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Amanatsu

**Author's Note:**

> A sequel to [Bigarade.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5517722)

1.

The blue glass bottle was on Will’s side of the bathroom counter when he came in, after his evening swim. It hadn’t been there hours earlier.

Will left off toweling his hair and picked it up, turning it over in his hands. After a moment he uncapped it and raised it to his face. He had to close his eyes, then: the phantom flower of an old ache blooming in his chest. It might have been nostalgia.

The shower shut off, but he didn’t turn around.

“I considered others,” Hannibal said, “but I confess I never tired of this one.”

“You didn’t have time to tire of it,” Will said.

Hannibal pressed his lips, briefly, to Will’s temple. Will was aware of smelling like chlorine and exertion. Hannibal was clean damp skin and the faint, neutral scent of his soap -- something like sweet almonds.

“Wear it to bed,” Hannibal said. “Don’t wear anything else.”

 

2.

How the house was:

White walls and dark wood, half perched on cliffside, nestled in a grove of cypress. When they had first arrived Will had not expected that it would be fragrant and cool, even in summer. Two bedrooms led to the same ludicrously excessive bathroom, that flowed down marble steps into an open trellised gallery, that became patio, that became pool. There was a gap in the trees that allowed the infinity edge of the latter to blur with the horizon: from certain angles it seemed possible to swim out indefinitely, into the sea.

There was a commonality to the houses in which they stayed. It might have been that Hannibal picked them to make Will feel safe.

Hannibal’s bed, too, was excessive, far larger than the one in Baltimore. Will tended to lose himself in it: there seemed no end to the thing, no sagging spots or edges, no left or right or up or down. No orientation, except with respect to each other. Perhaps that was also intentional. Will didn’t habitually sleep there, and he hadn’t intended to go to Hannibal’s room, before this. Their conversation after dinner had unsettled him, and he had swum for a long time, alone.

He felt the unaccustomed pull in his muscles as he showered and dried himself off. Then he applied the splash bottle -- not as aftershave but deliberately, the way he’d seen Molly do it before a night out: curve and base of throat, along the hairline, wrists and crooks of elbows and underarms. She’d dabbed a bit at the back of her knees, right above where her sensible boots ended. Between her breasts too. Wrinkled her nose at Will and smiled, when she noticed him watching that.

Molly’s going-out perfume had been heavy on vanilla: a homey, gourmand scent. He hadn’t liked it much, truth be told, but for a while it had meant _belonging_.

 

3.

Now he wore -- something Hannibal had bought for him, and nothing else -- in Hannibal’s bed. The top notes of bitter citrus had burned off quickly, and what remained lay close to and inextricable from his skin.

“Tell me what it’s like, to you,” he said. Hannibal smiled, his gaze lowered.

“A veil,” he said, “sheer, like silk gauze, thrown over and around you. Accentuating the beauty of the physical body rather than obscuring it. Attached here, and here--”

He lifted Will’s hand and kissed the inside of his wrist. Then the elbow. The pulse points where blood ran hot just below the surface.

“Like a painting,” Will said, sounding dry even to himself. He didn’t feel like an _objet d’art_. He ate Hannibal’s food and lived in his house and came to his bed when asked, but he was not Hannibal’s plaything. At some point he’d ceased to fear it. What it felt like to him was that Hannibal kept these spaces -- the inviting houses, the pristine beds -- ready and waiting, always, like a lady from _The Tale of Genji_. They were as much Hannibal as his old Baltimore office, or the foyer of the Norman Chapel: rooms of the same palace, all open and belonging to Will.

Was Hannibal lonely, in this bed, when Will did not come?

Will thought he might be; that this was a small cruelty Will perpetrated, in the guise of resistance to manipulation. Sometimes Will could not sleep, in his own more modest, comfortable bed, but he did not go to Hannibal because in the small hours of the morning the thought of wanting him was unbearable -- that Will should be so conjoined to the cause of his nightmares, as to be soothed by it.

They never spoke of this. It was understood.

“You’re thinking,” Hannibal murmured. “What are you thinking?” He nuzzled at Will’s throat, the dip and curve of his collarbone, pressing more kisses as he went. When he reached the bullet scar in Will’s shoulder he lapped at it -- a single hot swipe of tongue -- then applied teeth. Will shivered.

“When you first -- bought it for me,” he said, “did you imagine this?”

“Yes,” Hannibal said, simply. He ran his hand down Will’s flank to his hip, caressing. “Did you?”

“I -- no.” Hannibal had taken him in hand. Will rolled his hips into the now-familiar grip: slick with lube and a little rough, intentionally so. His cock felt stiff and hot. “It wasn’t--”

“--What you’d come for?” Teeth again, tugging gently at Will’s nipple, at the same time as his hand worked over Will’s cock. “You would have enjoyed yourself, Will. That was the problem. You smell good like this, do you know? Clean and perfumed. Flushed and wanting and ready for me.”

“Hannibal,” Will said.

“If you’d come to me, those nights that you stayed, I would have driven the thoughts from your head -- for a time. And in that time you would have let me do anything I liked.”

“Hannibal,” Will said, “please.”

“Just like now,” Hannibal said. Will reached for him, and he caught Will’s wrist, pinning it to the mattress. Not painfully: a delicate reminder that he had weight on his side. “Turn over.”

 

4.

Afterward Hannibal fed him spoonfuls of -- sorbet, he supposed: ice that hit the tongue and melted like fog. A mirage of mint and honey and tangerines. Will floated in the bed and could hardly feel at all, except where Hannibal touched him.

The barrier between his thoughts and his voice was gone. But it didn’t matter that his guard was non-existent, because Hannibal already knew. There could be no secrets between them.

“The man who was murdered, in Corfu,” he said.

“I know,” said Hannibal.

“There was a case… more than a decade ago. I was Homicide, on loan. The evidence was there, but it never felt right.”

“The wrong man was arrested,” Hannibal said, “despite your reservations, then released. There were no more deaths. Perhaps the true culprit left the country.”

“See? I thought you might remember.” There was no tension in Hannibal’s body. “Was it a patient, Doctor Lecter? Tell me his name.”

“An anonymous tip to the local police?” Hannibal said. Will could hear the smile in his voice. “Or does this killer warrant the attention of Interpol? ...Of the FBI?”

“He’ll keep going,” Will said, “he’s refined his approach. He thinks he’s safe to -- indulge.”

“Is he?”

“No,” Will said. Hannibal brought more sorbet to his lips, and he took it, eyes closed.

 


End file.
